The wealthtech space is awash with solutions that all do something.
But Oleg Tishkevich believes the industry is long overdue for a solution that does everything.
This week, cloud technology and consulting company Invent announced the launch of a “super app” development platform with wealth managers in mind.
Tishkevich, CEO of the Seattle-based firm, likened the platform to existing super apps like WeChat and the planned “everything app” Elon Musk hopes X soon becomes.
According to Harvard Business Review, super apps like WeChat, Alipay, and Meituan have dominated the Asian tech landscape. These platforms offer a large network of services in one integrated app and provide an experience different from the app-to-app switching U.S. consumers are accustomed to.
But things may finally be changing in the West. In addition to Musk, Mark Zuckerberg has shared a desire to see Meta and WhatsApp deliver a “super app-like vision” of an integrated marketplace and chat platform — one that includes both a person’s fun and a person’s finances.
READ MORE: What advisors need to know about Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s so called ‘Twitter Killer’
Technological research and consulting firm Gartner compares super apps to a “Swiss Army knife” with a range of component tools — or micro-apps — that the user can use and remove as needed. Gartner also expects that by 2027, more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of super apps.
“We see Super Apps gaining interest from forward-thinking organizations,” Gartner Analyst Jason Wong said in a statement. “Those organizations embrace composable application and architecture strategies to power new digital business opportunities in their industries or adjacent markets.”
Tishkevich said the goal is for Invent’s super app to bring together multiple applications and workflows like account opening and servicing, CRM, reporting, billing, trading, financial planning, risk profiling, rebalancing, client portals and more into one customizable application.
He stressed the customization aspect of the vision in an interview with Financial Planning, saying that a unified technology-development strategy that is open-architecture will allow firms to plug in only the applications and systems they want.
It will also allow each person within the firm to have a bespoke collection of micro-apps and functionalities vital to the position they hold.
“A financial planner would have a different kind of super app configuration than the CEO of a firm or support person or a compliance person,” Tishkevich said. “Each one of these personas, (would have) their tailored user journey and user experience designed specifically for them.”
Tishkevich said this focus on bringing together a curated set of applications firms have identified as mission critical is an important distinction between Invent’s super app and the traditional industry all-in-ones that may be all-encompassing, but ultimately limited.
“With an all-in-one, a company creates a vision of how they see, let’s say, an RIA, operate. And they design a tool that covers all the things that a firm does to run the business. The challenge is that you’ve got a lot of the functionality jammed into that all-in-one that if you’re a single-person RIA, you don’t care about 80% of the stuff that’s there,” he said. “You just need to use the 20% for the functions. But because it’s all in one, you get all this other stuff that you don’t really care for. And this creates problems with adoption because everybody has to be trained not to touch this button, but go to this button.”
According to a recent T3/Inside Information advisor technology survey, 20% of the industry is using an all-in-one solution. But the research finds that many firms using a unified solution still rely on third-party technologies to supplement functionality.
Tishkevich said inefficiency shows the potential of the super app development model for advisory firms to both innovate and simplify their operations.
“We’re definitely facilitating others to build on our platform, as well as building some of the solutions that we would provide on the platform,” he said. “As you think about the concept of the super app, compare it (to) CDs from back in the day. All the music was on the album … and then Spotify and a few others kind of broke that stuff up that you can create your own custom playlists. And even further, the DJs mix their own songs.
“So that’s it. We want to put a little bit of music into our maybe not so exciting industry.”
Scroll down to get caught up on other recent fintech news you might have missed in our Wealthtech Weekly recap. And check out the previous edition here.